Digital electronic devices have become a mainstay of modern life. With cellular telephones, digital music players, personal computers, digital television sets, and other digital electronic devices, virtually everyone in modern society uses one or more digital electronic devices.
As with the rise of any industry, the rise of the digital electronics industry has been accompanied by the rise of related criminal enterprises. With the rise of digital electronic devices, there has been a growth in identity theft wherein criminals steal personal information about a person from digital electronic devices in order to steal a person's identity for use in committing fraud. For example, a unique identification code of a cellular telephone can be cloned such that a criminal may make telephone calls that are charged to the account of another person.
Another criminal enterprise related to digital electronics is the theft of the intellectual property of the actual digital electronic devices. For example, a criminal entity may copy the electronics design and computer code of a valuable digital electronic device in order to build and sell unauthorized copies of that digital electronic device. Such copies of digital electronic devices violate the trademark, copyright, and/or patent rights of the original maker of the copied digital electronics device.
Although legal remedies exist to go after entities that create unauthorized copies of digital electronic devices, such legal remedies are not always easy to enforce. It is difficult to locate and serve papers on an entity that is creating unauthorized copies of digital electronic devices. The laws and legal systems of various markets may not be mature enough to handle difficult intellectual property cases. Legal suits can also be very expensive to pursue due to court costs and legal fees. Thus, it would be advantageous to prevent copies of digital electronic devices from being created in the first place.